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Nokia Lumia 930 Review

The Windows Phone We Deserve

The Lumia 930 cements Nokia's reputation as the best maker of Windows Phones — even without Cortana — but the platform still lacks clear reasons to switch from iOS or Android.

Built Solid

At 5.9 ounces, the Lumia 930 is chunky as smartphones go today, although it's not as tank-like as previous Windows Phones.

Where's the Dimmer?

"Bright" doesn't come close to describing the orange color of the backside of our review unit, although it comes in other colors as well, including black and white.

Camera Plus

The Lumia 930 has a great 20-megapixel camera. The image processing is robust, although we'd like to see better low-light performance.

Bottom View

The bottom of the phone has the MicroUSB port.

Top View

On top, you'll find the headphone jack.

Case

This optional case better protects the Lumia 930, although it's hardly more subtle.

Say what you will about Nokia’s single-minded focus on Windows Phone, but the all-in approach brings with it at least one major plus: for the foreseeable future, the Finnish handset maker’s flagship devices are a shoe-in for the title of “best Windows Phone handset.” And, spoiler alert: that title certainly applies here.

The Nokia Lumia 930 is fast, bright and an overall lovely piece of hardware built around a steadily improving operating system. It’s powerful, sharp, has the company’s customary camera focus and — in spite of a chunky footprint — is an all around eye-catcher.

As ever, however, handing out the company’s new flagship invariably prompts the same question: does it offer a truly compelling enough experience to convince users to make the switch?

Swank Tank

If anyone’s going to win hearts and minds for Windows Phone, it’s Nokia. No other handset maker is in a better position to bring people over to the world of Live Tiles, because no other handset maker has more to lose. Heck, even the company’s recent flirtation with Android in the developing world was quickly quashed by its new Redmond overlords.

The 930 shares some superficial aesthetic similarities with the rest of its Lumia brethren — primarily the brightly colored carbon-fiber back panel. Nokia sent an orange model as a review unit, and I'm actually underplaying things by using the words "brightly colored." This shade of electric tangerine makes the 930 a pretty solid choice of handset for a hunting trip, so nobody accidentally mistakes you for a deer while you’re playing a round of Angry Birds.

The new phone won’t be mistaken for its predecessor, the Lumia 920, anytime soon thanks to a brushed-aluminum band running around the phone’s perimeter, which should prove familiar to anyone who’s ever set eyes on an iPhone. Nokia’s done a really nice job incorporating that element into the phone’s build here, with a glossy display bezel that tapers almost seamlessly into the aluminum siding.

Compared to today's svelte smartphones, the Nokia Lumia 930 is built like a tank.

On the right side, you’ve got a trio of big, aluminum buttons: a volume rocker, power button and a dedicated camera button — this is, after all, Nokia. True to their metallic nature, the buttons have slightly sharp edges that could have benefited from a little sanding. You’re not going to slice your fingers open, of course, but brushing up against them isn’t particularly pleasant.

That’s the sum total of physical buttons on the handset. You’ll also find a trio of touch buttons on the front, below the screen: back, home and search. There’s a SIM card slot and headphone jack on the top of the device and a microUSB slot on the bottom.

Of course, the metal band isn’t there purely for aesthetic purposes. As with the iPhone, it also exposes the antenna for better reception — for those who actually still use a phone to, you know, make phone calls.

Thanks to its metal frame, the Nokia 930 is nothing if not solid. In fact, compared to the increasing number of devices out there focused on slim profiles, this Lumia is built like a tank. The phone is 0.4 inch thick, compared to the 0.32 inch of the Galaxy S5 and the 0.3 inch of the iPhone 5S. At 5.9 ounces, the 930 also has a decent heft to it.

To be fair, Nokia’s managed to noticeably shrink things down from the 0.42-inch, 6.5-ounce Lumia 920. And besides, the heft goes a ways toward giving the phone that aforementioned solid feel, particularly when coupled with the brushed-aluminum band. The 930 isn’t exactly what you’d call rugged, but it’s also designed to stand up to the wear and tear of everyday life.

Five inches seems to be the currently screen size sweet spot for phone displays. After using a plus-size Android handset for so long, it’s refreshing to return to a smartphone that I’m able to hold in one of my average human-sized hands.

The rear of the device is slightly convex, but thanks the band running around it, the phone is nowhere near as round as the 920. The matte backside also lends a feeling of quality to the product. Any complaints about the plasticky feel of past Lumias doesn’t apply here.

Toward the top of the back is the camera, which proudly dispays the words “Zeiss” and “20MP,” just to let you know that the company isn’t messing around here, along with a large flash and not one, but four microphones. More on all of this in a bit. Toward the bottom is a single, small speaker grille.

Under the Hood

There’s no expandable memory here, but Nokia’s been more than generous with an on-board 32GB, along with an additional 7GB of cloud storage. Honestly, if you need more than that, I’m not sure what you’re doing with the thing.

The rest of the internals meet a similarly high standard, with 2GB of memory, a zippy 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor and a 2,420-millamp-hour (mAh) battery that will get you through a day of use.

Oh, and when it comes time to charge the thing, Nokia’s helpfully included Qi wireless charging. The compatible charging plate retails for around $100, but play your cards right and you may actually be able to score one for free as part of a bundle through the right retailer.

Camera power

Nokia made a point to talk up the 930’s ability to be viewed in daylight — a longtime sticking point with mobile displays. This is partially true. While the phone does a good job adjusting brightness, color and saturation to sunlight, the overall glossiness still presents a fair bit of glare. Still, the phone is far more readable outdoors than much of the competition.

The display itself clocks in at 1,920 x 1,080, which works out to 441 ppi (pixels per inch) — denser than both the iPhone 5S and Galaxy S5, and the same as you’ll find on the HTC One M8. It’s an extremely rich and sharp viewing experience, making those brightly colored Windows tiles pop. The screen’s also got impressive viewing angles, should you ever need to invite some friends over to watch a video on the ol' smartphone.

Unlike past high-end devices from Nokia, the camera isn’t the make-or-break feature here. There’s no 40-megapixel sensor that makes the device a point-and-shoot with a camera attached. But this is Nokia we’re talking about here, so the camera, naturally, gets plenty of love, including a not-at-all-shabby 21-megapixel sensor and four small, omnidirectional mics.

The Lumia 930 takes good 20-megapixel photos, although low-light quality could be better.

Image: Mashable, Brian Heater

In daylight, the images are sharp and bright, and the 20-megapixel resolution means that you can reframe a photo after shooting using Nokia’s robust photo-editing software. We were, however, a bit disappointed with the low-light performance on the device. Images were grainier than we’d expect from a Nokia offering.

The aforementioned small speaker grille is surprisingly loud. However, the sound does get a bit fuzzy at high volumes. As ever, you’re still best off using a pair of headphones or a Bluetooth speaker if you plan on doing extended watching or listening on the device, but for short YouTube videos and the like, the little speaker does the trick.

Let there be no mistake: Nokia has pumped everything it’s got into this phone. It’s a powerful piece of hardware for a not-entirely-unreasonable asking price of $600 unlocked, putting it $100 to $150 below pricing for other manufacturers’ flagship phones. It’s also a nice-looking device, steeped in the Lumia line’s signature industrial design, while taking a few stylistic liberties.

Nokia sought to create a device that could compete with the top-tier Android and iOS devices out there, making the 930, by default, the best Windows Phone handset around. For many consumers, however, the Windows Phone part of that equation continues to be a considerable sticking point.

Going to 8.1

Let’s be honest for a moment — it’s going to be a while before calling a device “the best Windows Phone around” doesn’t come across as a sort of backhanded compliment. These days, the stigma is mostly a holdover from those early days when Microsoft elbowed its way into the post-iPhone handset world with an unpolished operating system and an anemic app store.

In the meantime, however, the company’s done a fine job smoothing over its experience and romancing developers. And while it’s true that the app selection is still lacking the depth and breadth of Android and iOS, most of the major players are now on-board with Redmond’s square take on the mobile world.

The biggest change that Windows 8.1 brings is additional customization to the relatively static world of live tiles. It’s seems like a small change (and, well, if you want to get literal about it, I suppose it actually is), but the addition of new title sizes does a good job letting you better prioritize what gets preference on your start screen — though I do wish the process of moving things around was a bit more dynamic.

A big aesthetic change in Windows Phone 8.1 is the ability to let a homescreen image "bleed" into some of the phone's live tiles.

Image: Mashable, Pete Pachal

Another customization plus: the ability to add a background image that sort of "bleeds" through the semi-transparent tiles. Between this, added bandwidth for homescreen tiles and the already-present live-tile updates, your homescreen is every bit as busy as you want it to be.

The other big WP 8.1 addition — Cortana — is sadly absent from the international version of the 930 that I tested. On the upside, the old voice recognition on this particular unit will Bing whatever you need in a delightful British accent.

And, as ever, Nokia compensates for a perceived lack of available apps with a number of its own proprietary selections, including the lovingly beefed-up Camera and Here maps, as well as the MixRadio music app, which is set to take on a new life of its own after being spun off from Microsoft.

High-End Windows Phone

The sad premature death of Nokia’s venture into Android marks a return to the company’s all-in approach to Windows Phone. As such, maintaining its position as the maker of the best Windows Phone handsets around is a make-or-break proposition for Nokia — and thankfully, the company continues to deliver on that front, with devices that go toe-to-toe with the top devices on competing platforms.

That hardware prowess coupled with some welcome updates in the form of Windows 8.1 make for the most compelling argument yet to give Microsoft’s mobile aspirations a chance. But even as Windows Phone becomes more of a true competitor to Android and iOS, the operating system continues to suffer from a lack of truly compelling reasons to switch teams.

But for all of its upside, the 930 doesn’t offer enough advances over the competition to ever seal the deal for most users.

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